Intense, Challenging Forum in Zion, Illinois:
What Must We Do to STOP Police Terror?
October 7, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The Loving Arms Outreach Ministry opened its doors to welcome the forum “What Must We Do to STOP Police Terror?” in Zion just days before it was scheduled to take place, after other churches and schools had declined to provide a venue.
At the October 5 forum in Zion, Illinois—from left, Lorien Carter, aunt of Tony Robinson, murdered by Madison, Wisconsin, police; Sharon Irwin, Tony’s grandmother; Lorien’s daughter; LaToya Howell, mother of Justus Howell, murdered by Zion police; Gloria Pinex, mother of Darius Pinex, killed by Chicago police; Alice Howell, grandmother of Justus; Venus Anderson, mother of Christopher Anderson, killed by Highland Park, Illinois, police.
It was an intense, challenging forum in many different ways. Four families who had loved ones murdered by police began the evening. LaToya Howell, whose son Justus Howell was murdered by Zion police, described in anguish her decision to leave Justus, the day he was shot, with his friends in Zion because ironically the town she was going to in Wisconsin is known for its hostility to Black people. She talked about how Justus knew about Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and how she had schooled him to put his hands up when stopped by police. “He was terrified” when confronted by the police, so he ran and then the police shot him twice in the back. LaToya described in anguishing detail frantically calling to find out what happened to Justus after she heard he was at the hospital. LaToya tore into the police’s lying justifications for killing Justus—lies that have been swallowed by some people in the community. The grief was overwhelming as people from other families held her.
Sharon Irwin and Lorien Carter, the grandmother and aunt of Tony Robinson, killed by Madison, Wisconsin, police, told the story of the police murder of 19-year-old Tony. Gloria Pinex was there. Gloria was one of the first stolen lives parents to go up to Zion in the days after Justus was killed. She talked about her four-year battle for justice for her son Darius and the cover-up by City of Chicago attorneys and the Chicago police—a cover-up that started in the hour right after Darius was killed in Englewood. (See “New revelations in 2011 murder by police of Darius Pinex: Criminal Conspiracy by the Chicago PD: How to get away with murder.”) Another mother, Venus Anderson, told a horrific story of her son Christopher, 27, who was shot by police literally while a patient at a hospital in Highland Park, north of Chicago. Christopher and his young daughter were brought by ambulance to the ER after a car accident in November 2014, and police shot him with nine bullets in less than two seconds because he was agitated about his daughter’s treatment.
And the fact that these murders by police are just the tip of the iceberg drove home how this police terror must be stopped.
The evening featured Carl Dix, who was given a stirring introduction by Jed Stone, an attorney who practices in Lake County, where Zion is located. He talked about how the war on drugs had been a war on the poor and that Lake County was notorious nationwide for false confessions/convictions. Jed expressed his disappointment that more people were not there to hear from both the families and especially from Carl Dix, who he called an “American hero” for Carl’s decades of revolutionary work, fighting against the oppression of Black people, police brutality, and mass incarceration. Stone drew from his experience in the 1960s about how determined if at first small numbers of people can mushroom into many tens of thousands more when they have right on their side.
Carl Dix spoke as a revolutionary communist and co-initiator, with Cornel West, of Rise Up October. He read the recent statement from Bob Avakian (see box on this page), which framed his discussion of both the movement for real revolution and Rise Up October. He went into the ugly history of the oppression of Black people starting with slavery down to today. He said he spoke with the cousin of Emmett Till earlier in the day, recounting that nightmare in 1955 of Emmett’s lynching at the hands of racists in Mississippi and the courage of his mother in making society confront what had been done to her son. He compared this with the courage of the mothers at the forum. He challenged the audience that this society with all its horrors is not permanent nor the best that is possible and to not accept itty-bitty changes. It is entirely reasonable, Dix said, to demand that the police stop killing people—it would not have been hard to STOP choking Eric Garner when he kept telling the police he could not breathe. The audience broke into enthusiastic applause when Dix announced the plans for the non-violent direct action against the notorious Rikers Island prison in New York City on October 23, as part of the Rise Up October protests October 22-24, as he hammered away at what a hellhole of a debtors’ prison exists right in the heart of NYC. The audience gave Dix a standing ovation at the end of his speech.
Reverend Jerome McCorry filled the space with his angry exposure of police murders in Ohio. John Crawford was shot by police in Walmart as he talked on his phone holding a toy gun he had picked up off the shelf. Another man was beaten by the police, and then the police refused to take him inside a hospital emergency room, taking him instead to a bridge and throwing him off it into the river below. The same cops broke out a window of the police car from the inside so they could lie and say the man in their custody escaped. In excruciating detail, Rev. McCorry painted a picture of this outrage for which no cop was ever punished.
Rev. McCorry was scathing in his criticism of the churches and ministers who are not taking up this urgent fight, who are cozy with city officials and police departments, who put keeping their grants above standing on the right side. It was a sharp moral challenge to those who were there and to the ministers who were not there... the ministers who knew all about the event because of the work of the Howells’ and McCorry’s dialogues with them in the days before the program.
As the evening wound up, people who are getting on the buses to go to NYC for Rise Up October were asked to stand up, and others pledged to raise the money to make sure the families and the buses got there. It was very good and important that people from around the North Shore who do not face what happens in communities of the oppressed every day came to learn and to show their support for the Howells and the other families and to hear Carl Dix and Rev. McCorry. Funds were raised on the spot and pledges taken for more.
It is probably safe to say that Zion/Waukegan has never seen a forum like this!!!
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